SNPA clone

I had been reading for a while about how nice a beer Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is so, last weekend I went out a bought six 330ml bottles, well it was only fair to give it a good test! I really liked it, I served it quite cold and found it to be wonderfully bitter with a really prominent hop aroma and flavour. After some research on Jims Home Brew Forum. I found that the hops used are Magnum, Pearle and Cascade.

I'm going to have a try at cloning this beer hopefully next week.

This will be the recipe, i'm just waiting for some of the ingredients to turn up.

Brewlength 25L
Estimated OG 1.056
Estimated IBU ~40
Estimated SRM ~9
66 Degree Mash - 90 Mins
Boil Time - 60 Mins

5400gm Pale Malt Maris Otter Grain 91.5%
400gm Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 7.0%
100gm Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 1.5%
25gm Pearle [6.90 %] (60 min) Hops 14.5 IBU
25gm Magnum [11.00 %] (60 min) Hops 25.6 IBU
30gm Cascade [6.80 %] (10 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep)
50gm Cascade [6.80 %] (0 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep)

Fermenting at 18 degrees with US-05

Dragon Stout - Jamaica

I've tried a bottle of Dragon Stout tonight that I found in my local Supermarket, it's the first time I've tried it and to be honest I expected it to taste cheap and awful but I was pleasantly surprised. It poured with a good 1/2 to one inch fairly-tightly beaded head and tasted very sweet and light and refreshing, certainly not what I was expecting. It's Brewed by Red Stripe in Kingston Jamaica and comes in half pint bottles and weighs in at 7.5%. It gets the thumbs up from me!

There are some recipes here for cloning it which I might have a bash at and stick a few bottles away for Christmas I have loads of empty Leffe bottles that I could use.

Batemans Rosey Nosey

Tonight i'm having a Rosey Nosey from Lincolnshires Batemans brewery in Wainfleet. Obviously this was their Christmas beer and very nice it is too, a full bodied sessionable (4.9%) winter ale. Very nice on a rainy night like tonight.

www.bateman.co.uk

As for my own brewing, it's now looking like being the latter part of this week before I can brew Randy Sparrow.

It's official it's Christmas

I like a few cans of pedi at christmas and this is going down well tonight!

Rolling Hitch IPA 5.2% abv

Last night I sampled a bottle of Darwin Brewery Ltd Rolling Hitch IPA and thought that it was the dog's wobblies, it's gone straight to the top of my favourite bottled beer list, beating St Austell - Tribute by a nose.

The Write Up

Rolling Hitch 1864: A Traditional shipping rope knot - of which thousands were produced and tied on Wearside's famous roperies and ship yards.

Darwin Rolling Hitch: An award winning classio style India Pale Ale, produced with only the finest British pale malts combined with rich Amarillo hops resulting in a refreshing fruit flavour and clean hoppy aftertaste.

This one did exactly what it said on the tin(bottle) very refreshing, nice fruit flavours but not massivley overpowering but the Amarillo hop aftertaste lingers for ages, I've emailed my local micro brewer to enquire about getting hold of some Amarillo to have a crack at making a pale Amarillo brew this side of the wallet emptying season.

I'm going to get a half dozen of these in and save them for a special event in the near future ;o)

Tamworth Beer Festival

We went to the Tamworth Beer Festival on Friday 7th, we all had a great night, can't remember too much but ended up getting an overpriced take away from a posh indian and a cup of tea in a taxi rank.

These pictures / flashbacks are from the night.

The smaller of the two 'walls of ale'














You can just about see all of the kegs on this picture, there was a bottled beer/cider table just behind me also.





Lee put a really brave face on being dragged along to a Real Ale Festival.






He...well...he....was having a close look at the beer!







Mick seemed pleased with his selection of Cumbrian Lad, nice drop!






Neil, who apparently had a really shiny left eye brow!







Me, with what appears to be 'The Beer Sweats' too early in the night!






A much, much happier Lee once he'd found the strong cider and bottled lagers!






Entertainment for the evening was TreeBeard, they were great, crazy folk music covers and ale!





Towards the end of the evening Mick tried one of Lee's strong ciders, i'm quite sure he didn't like it!!!

36 Pints of Goats Milk

On Bank Holiday Monday my brother & his wife purchased a 36 pint keg of "Goats Milk" from Church End Brewery for around £42 (bargain), it's a superb afternoon quaffer at 3.8% and ideal for the BBQ, it's a nice light tasting ale with a predominant Styrian Goldings aroma, it went down very well indeed, here's my brother making sure the keg was definetely empty. Cheers!

A good Barbie and Barbie-Brew!!

A Cider Tonight

Tonight I'm drinking "Westons - Premium Organic Cider" 6.5% mainly because it was on offer at the Co-Op. The bottle says "Made from organically grown cider apples under the strict conditions imposed by the soil association, Organic Certification UK5. An easy to drink cider with a ripe apple aroma and a refreshing well balanced taste." I'm not a massive cider nut but I do enjoy a bottle occasionally, this is definately one of the better one's I've tried .